Since Loki hadn't placed a tracking spell on the Weasley twins, he had no choice but to search the area spot by spot. Luck was with him, though, it didn't take long before he caught sight of the twins amid the chaos.

They looked fine. Peter Parker had probably been overthinking things.

Loki turned to head back, but something stopped him. A beat later, urgent voices crackled over the open comm channel,

"Need backup now! The purple potato is trying to take the Gauntlet!"

That was what was wrong. The crowd brawling in the distance, that was Thanos and the Avengers.

Loki looked back in astonishment, ducked behind the shell of a collapsed building, and carefully surveyed the scene.

The Infinity Gauntlet was being passed frantically among the twins, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor, keep it away from Thanos, don't get hit, do both at once. The group was steadily losing ground.

Thanos's defense and attack power were both overwhelming. There was no opening to sneak a snap through; all they could do was stall and hope reinforcements arrived.

At that moment, the Gauntlet landed in Thor's hands.

Thor tucked it under one arm and gripped Stormbreaker in the other, lunging at Thanos with murder in the expression. Maybe it was the bitterness of what had happened during the Infinity War driving him, every strike went straight for the head, the axe swinging with devastating force.

Even Thanos struggled to hold position against the God of Thunder at full power. The razor-sharp axe drove Thanos back step by step.

Seeing Thor gain the upper hand, Steve hurled the shield and swung Mjolnir hard. The instant hammer met shield, an enormous burst of energy exploded outward and blasted Thanos dozens of meters back. Dust rolled up in waves around the impact.

But the Mad Titan wasn't finished. Years of combat experience kicked in, Thanos clawed into the ground to stop the retreat, snatched the shield out of the air with lightning reflexes, and hurled it back toward Steve with even greater force.

Being a four-times-enhanced Super Soldier counted for a lot. It still wasn't enough against a Titan whose strength and durability exceeded Steve's by several times over.

Steve reached out to intercept the shield. The force drove Steve backward anyway, gouging deep furrows into the ground, until Steve's knees finally buckled and hit the earth.

Tony Stark had taken a blade to the abdomen earlier in the fight. Now Tony sat slumped against a chunk of rubble, watching all of this with burning urgency and absolutely nothing left to do about it. All Tony could do was silently hope the suit's built-in repair system would get Tony back on both feet before it was too late.

Then, in a flash of panic, Tony shouted:

"Thor, watch out!"

"Behind you!"

The warning collided with the shouts of reinforcements just arriving from the rear. Thor had been about to raise the Gauntlet and snap, the outcry stopped the motion dead.

Thor turned. Thanos was right there, face dark with fury, double-bladed sword already swinging down and the distance between them closing fast.

Thor dropped low and rolled, barely clearing the strike. Thanos didn't let up, charging forward again.

From the shadows at a distance, Loki, who had intended to stay hidden and pick his shots, felt his pupils contract.

He couldn't stay back.

He broke cover, already conjuring a mass of sickly green magic between his hands, and hurled it with everything he had.

"BOOM —!"

The blast hit like a thunderclap. When the dust settled, everyone stared as both Thanos and Thor lay sprawled on the ground, and the Infinity Gauntlet, which had been in Thor's hand a moment ago, was nowhere in sight.

"Ah. Odinson."

Thanos climbed to his feet, unhurried, brushing the dust from those shoulders. Then those eyes settled on Loki. A mocking smile pulled at the corner of Thanos's mouth.

"I didn't expect that even you would betray me."

In the memory of this Thanos, from a different timeline, Loki was still the incompetent underling who had failed to conquer New York and been dragged back to Asgard in chains. Loyal, in the end. Useless.

The betrayal hadn't crossed Thanos's mind. When the little prince had turned up so wretched and broken all those years ago, the hatred on that face for Asgard, for Odin, it had looked genuine.

Nearby, Thor scrambled up from the dirt, and the image of watching Loki die right in front of him came rushing back without warning. Thor immediately stepped in front of Loki, muttering something under his breath.

Loki couldn't help listening.

"Brother... next time, just hit the enemy. Could you please not blast me along with them...?"

He quietly rolled his eyes and chose to pretend Thor wasn't there.

"Betrayal?" Loki looked at Thanos and let out a short laugh, as though the word itself was genuinely funny to him.

"I was never loyal to you. How exactly would that be betrayal?"

"So you're set on opposing me."

Thanos wiped down the long blade with one rough palm, moving at a leisurely pace that bore no trace of the frantic urgency from minutes ago.

Loki spread his hands. Said nothing.

"Take a look at these people you're fighting for," Thanos said, gesturing at the hostile faces ringing them on all sides.

"Some of them have beaten you. Some doubted you. Some of them still hold you responsible for everything that went wrong." A slow, contemptuous click of the tongue. "I almost feel sorry for you, Odinson."

Another click. Feigned concern, perfectly performed. "Let me guess — your brother, your people — did any of them mourn for you? Do any of them actually know what you went through?"

"We are alike, you and I. Wouldn't you rather build a new world at my side?"

Even now Thanos was still making the pitch. Thanos was nothing like those foolish Asgardians, with their laughable obsession with brute force, the ones who looked at a sorcerer of that caliber and called him worthless.

Every word landed.

Loki began to tremble, barely at first, then all at once. His face had gone deathly pale. His eyes stayed locked on Thanos. The knuckles of his clenched hands cracked in the silence.

The fall from the Bifrost. Everything that followed. The memories surfaced one after another, each one worse than the last. The worst he had.

Thor looked at him, quiet with worry. "Loki..."

Thor didn't know what had happened to his brother after the Bifrost. But the hollowness, the exhaustion, the state Loki had been in when they'd found each other again on Earth, that had been real. Thor had carried the question for years, too afraid of what it might stir up to ever ask it.

"Then," Loki had forgotten Thor was there at all. The hatred in his eyes was undiluted as he turned them back on Thanos. "Who made me go through all of that?!"

The Avengers went quiet. Every one of them who had been in the Battle of New York wore the same expression, complicated, unwilling to name what it was. Setting aside what Loki had done, when they actually stopped and tried to remember, what had he looked like when he first arrived on Earth?

Pale. Dark hollows under his eyes. Barely anything left of him.

No one had ever known what he'd endured to get there.

Thanos didn't answer. Instead, almost casually, the subject changed.

"What a shame. I don't think we're going to reach an understanding."

A confident smile. And then Ebony Maw materialized at Thanos's side as if stepping out of nowhere, and in those hands was the Infinity Gauntlet. The one the Avengers had been quietly searching for this entire time.

Every face in the group shifted.

"Father."

Ebony Maw offered it up with reverence, and somehow, impossibly, something that looked like delight was readable on that twisted face.

"I do have to thank you all for cooperating so well in buying me time."

Thanos took the Gauntlet. Those thick fingers moved across the six stones, one by one, slow and deliberate. The hunger in those eyes was unmistakable. So was the barely-contained elation of something finally within reach.

"Don't let him snap!"

Tony forced upright through the stabbing pain in the abdomen, sweat dripping, and shouted across the field while channeling every scrap of remaining power into a single laser blast aimed at the Gauntlet.

Clatter.

Caught completely off guard, Thanos took the hit. The Gauntlet tumbled to the ground and rolled.

The others didn't need to be told twice. They surged forward all at once, and the battlefield that had gone briefly, deceptively quiet erupted back into chaos.

In the scramble, Yang Luoluo made a beeline for Tony Stark, dropped to her knees beside Tony, and started pouring energy in. The color came back into Tony's face, visibly, within seconds.

"Alright, kid." Tony's voice was steady, warm, and left no room for argument. "Go help Cap. I think he took a bad hit just now."

Renewed strength flooding back through the suit, Tony gave Yang Luoluo a gentle push in Steve's direction and, without another word, turned and walked back into the fight.

➤ Next: Endgame (5) — The Fight Begins

Chapter 118 - Endgame (5) — The Fight Begins

Seeing Tony charge into the battlefield looking every bit as energetic as ever, Yang Luoluo had no choice but to bury her worry and sprint toward Steve.

The impact from catching the shield must have done its damage. Both of Steve's palms were split open, bone-deep gashes that looked absolutely brutal, blood still pattering to the ground in steady drops when Yang Luoluo reached Steve's side.

Even so, Steve seemed completely numb to the pain, just tightened the wrist straps and moved to charge right back in.

Yang Luoluo cranked up the energy output fast. The wounds on Steve's palms sealed at a visible rate, and Steve watched them without blinking, as if sheer attention could speed the process along.

No time to waste. The moment the wounds shrank to faint pink scars, Yang Luoluo stepped aside.

Steve was already gone, charging headlong into the battle before she'd even finished stepping back.

At the center of the fight.

The gauntlet hit the ground one second and got booted into the air the next, some opportunist timing a kick perfectly, with absolutely zero regard for the reality-ending power it contained.

Thanos, one breath away from completing the grand mission, went even more purple with rage. The double-bladed sword came up, and Thanos started swinging at everything in reach just to have somewhere to put the fury.

"Hey, grape-face — nobody ever tell you that villains die from monologuing?"

Tony hovered overhead, firing lasers straight down without any particular mercy. The problem was that the Titan was built like a wall, and the shots barely registered as an inconvenience.

The only ones Thanos genuinely respected were Carol Danvers and Thor. Whether it was Captain Marvel in Binary Mode or Thor at full power, both were capable of fighting Thanos to a draw, or worse, pushing past that.

On top of that, this group had played Thanos perfectly. It was already an outnumbered fight, and without the Stones, defeat was a real possibility.

That thought had Thanos scanning the crowd mid-battle until Nebula's figure came into focus.

"Scared?" Gamora asked, still fighting. "Looks like he's furious about your betrayal."

Nebula was her sister, after all, so not long after the battle started, Gamora had slipped her out quietly. After listening to what Nebula had to say about the future, Gamora hadn't hesitated for a second before choosing sides.

Now Nebula was fighting alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy, even though, not so long ago, they'd all been on the other side of this war.

"Scared?" Nebula echoed, calm. A short laugh. Her blade took an enemy's head clean off, and she wiped the spatter from the face with the back of a hand.

"I stopped being capable of fear somewhere around the fifth or sixth round of modifications."

Gamora went quiet. There wasn't really anything to say to that, they were both Thanos's victims, when it came down to it. Gamora switched tracks.

"...What about Nebula? Your companions didn't kill her, did they?"

"Relax."

The other Gamora called back from a few yards away, mid-fight, sounding just the wrong side of cheerful about it.

"Considering you blew up that rich guy's compound about thirty seconds after arriving — congratulations. You're probably going to be working off that debt for a very long time."

"What?!" The long blade nearly slipped from Gamora's grip entirely. Gamora spun around in disbelief and caught the other Gamora's grin: smug, satisfied, and deeply unhelpful.

Gamora turned back and kept cutting through enemies in a daze. From behind, the aura radiating off her was pure, undiluted grief.

The Gamora who had delivered that particular piece of news felt a little awkward now, watching.

"It really is strange," she muttered, "talking to another version of yourself..."

She shook her shoulders, trying to shake off the weird feeling, and glanced sideways, only to find Star-Lord standing right there, staring unblinkingly at the other Gamora.

"Ow!" Gamora's boot connected hard. Star-Lord looked over with an expression of total innocence.

"What, babe? Seeing her just... made me think about the first time we met, that's all, "

"Nostalgic? I'll give you something to be nostalgic about."

Gamora didn't bother with a follow-up line. The kick landed exactly where it was aimed. Star-Lord folded, hit the ground, and didn't stop making noise for a while. Gamora finally exhaled.

"Still nostalgic?"

"...No." Star-Lord answered from the dirt, voice thin as paper.

Not far away, the other Gamora watched the whole thing with unconcealed disgust. It was genuinely baffling how her future self had ended up with someone like that.

Had future-her sustained some kind of eye injury?

"Look on the bright side," Nebula offered, which was rare enough to be notable. "Outside of him, your options are a tree or a raccoon."

Gamora looked toward the far end of the battlefield, where Groot and Rocket were mowing through enemies with matching enthusiasm and matching machine guns.

Gamora said nothing.

...

Elsewhere in the crowd.

"I'll handle the squid. Rest of you, keep going."

Loki was already moving before the words had fully landed, heading straight for Ebony Maw. Thor caught the faint glint at Loki's hands, the familiar outline of daggers, and immediately felt his heart climb into his throat.

Thor was going to develop genuine trauma from Loki and that knife habit.

Just as Thor moved to go after Loki and beg for anything other than blades, Bucky Barnes appeared at Thor's side, sweeping a machine gun across the field in long arcs, and casually freed up one hand to clap Thor on the shoulder.

"Relax. Loki trained knife work with me specifically. I'll be honest, the guy's a quick study."

Bucky Barnes was not exactly thrilled to bring it up, but the fact was that Barnes had once been Hydra's premier assassin, and blade work was the specialty. As half a student of that school, Loki wasn't going to embarrass anyone.

Still, the reassurance didn't quite take. Thor kept stealing glances in that direction throughout the fight.

"Odinson." Ebony Maw's expression sharpened the moment Loki came close. "Betraying Father is hardly a wise decision."

As a practitioner of the arts, Ebony Maw understood exactly what the title "Greatest Sorcerer of the Nine Realms" meant. One-on-one, this was not a guaranteed win.

"Save it."

Loki wasn't interested. One hand came up, and multiple spells fired at once. Ebony Maw's expression shifted fast, a Chitauri soldier was yanked forward by telekinesis just in time to absorb the hit.

The soldier crumpled and stopped moving. Ebony Maw maintained that characteristic posture of composure and spoke at a measured pace.

"This universe has been slowly moving toward its end. We have watched too much suffering born from scarcity. Only by fulfilling Father's purpose can it be saved."

"We are the righteous ones, Odinson. Join us. Together we can see this vision through—"

A faint pressure brushed at the edges of Loki's mind. Loki stopped, frowned, and tilted his head with something approaching genuine disbelief.

"Pardon me, but... are you attempting to mind-control me?"

Loki knew perfectly well that Thanos's foremost general had verbal persuasion as a core ability. It simply had not occurred to Loki that it would ever be pointed in this direction.

Did Ebony Maw not know that across a thousand years, the only thing that had ever managed to breach Loki's defenses even once was the Mind Stone?

The composure cracked, just slightly. Seeing that words weren't going to work, Ebony Maw dropped the approach entirely and attacked.

That was when the amusement finally reached Loki's face, a slow, genuine kind of interest as the fight kicked into gear.

Now this was more like it. It had been far too long since Loki had faced a sorcerer worth the name.

Stephen Strange stayed barricaded in the New York Sanctum and never came out. The girl with Chaos Magic hadn't fully mastered what she could do. And the handful of other magic users Loki had any acquaintance with were children.

Loki had been profoundly bored on Earth.

Loki was thriving. Ebony Maw was not.

The problem was structural. Ebony Maw's power set was built around verbal persuasion and telekinesis, and the verbal side was now entirely dead in the water. Loki, meanwhile, had spent an Asgardian lifetime building toward a complete toolkit: attack, defense, control, all of it.

The telekinesis became the only available option. Objects from every direction came flying toward Loki.

Loki batted them away, pressed forward, fired off spells from both hands, and drove Ebony Maw back one step at a time with something that looked very much like enjoyment.

Then the crowd went wrong all at once.

"No!"

The voice came from somewhere nearby, raw, cracked with panic.

Loki turned toward the sound.

➤ Next: Endgame (6)